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GoDaddy Registers Dozens of Questionable Virginia Tech Names

After seeing a post on the Second City CEO blog today about some rather graphic domain names being snatched up mere minutes after the Virginia Tech shootings this morning, we ran a few of the more sanguinary titles through a Whois search. GoDaddy came back on most of the results.

So we gave the domain name giant a call to get their take on things. We told Elizabeth Driscoll, GoDaddy’s vice president of public relations, that names such as vatechmassacre.com were being registered through her company today. Driscoll said she "was not aware of that." She got off the phone to look into the matter. Thirty minutes later, she called back.

"I found one that has been registered to GoDaddy," she said. It was vatechmassacre.com.

We asked if she’d looked for other names. She said she had not. We presented her with more examples of names registered with GoDaddy today: vatechrampage.com, vtmassacre.com, etc.

Driscoll said it was impossible to stop people from registering tasteless names or predict what they might be used for. "Someone might use it to collect money to help victims," she said. ""It’s a fact of life that when a major event happens, whether it’s positive or negative, people flock to register domain names….We don’t have the ability to monitor every site.".

GoDaddy usually becomes aware of a problem with one of their tens of millions of sites when a complaint is filed through their abuse department, Driscoll said. The company intervenes if it determines that a site is being used for "morally objectionable or illegal purposes."

"We consider each domain name or website on a case by case basis," Driscoll said. "I’m happy that you brought these to our attention."

At Driscolls’s request, we e-mailed her the results of our whois search. We’ll let you know if we get a response. A sampling of the GoDaddy names registered today that we turned up: